Patrick stepped outside the room and snapped at the footman hovering at the end of the hallway. Then he watched as Simone tenderly bathed Sophie’s face. Sophie twisted and moaned, trying to get away from the icy cloth. Finally he couldn’t bear to stand there helplessly, and took the cloth from Simone’s hands, pushing her away. He sat on the side of the bed.

“Wake up, Sophie,” he commanded softly, rubbing the cloth over his wife’s forehead. After a few minutes she opened her eyes.

“It hurts.” She fixed her eyes on his.

“Sophie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout….” He was almost babbling with relief.

Sophie frowned at him. “It hurts,” she repeated.

Patrick cupped her little face in his hands, giving her a quick kiss on her forehead. She was alarmingly hot under his lips.

“You have a fever, love. Fevers always hurt. Don’t worry. Dr. Lambeth will be here soon.”

“No! No, don’t let him come! He’ll make it happen.”

“Nothing is going to happen, darling.” Patrick began to rub the cloth over her face again. “I won’t let anything happen.”

“I don’t think you can stop it,” Sophie whispered. Her eyes were a dark midnight blue, still fastened on his. “You’ll hate me now.” Tears welled up in her beautiful eyes and spilled over.

Patrick’s heart jolted. She must be delirious, he thought as he bent over, kissing away the tears.

“Nothing could make me hate you, Sophie. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know how much I love you?”

But Sophie’s eyes had shifted away from his face. “It hurts!” she cried suddenly.

It was only when Simone handed him another cloth that Patrick realized that the one he was rubbing over her neck and face was now hot.

And so it continued. Occasionally Sophie opened her eyes and said incomprehensible things about how much he hated her, and meanwhile Patrick kept washing her face until the little rivulets of water trickling off her face had soaked through the sheets beneath her. He didn’t know what else to do, and he had to do something besides sending out more and more footmen with infuriated messages for Dr. Lambeth.

When the door finally opened, Patrick leveled a glare on the good doctor that would have shaken a less toughened practitioner. But Dr. Lambeth had dealt with many an angry relative, most recently a viscount who had just welcomed his fifth daughter into the world, and he judged husbands to be on the lesser side of rationality at the best of times. He bustled in importantly, standing at the head of the bed with two fingers delicately poised on Sophie’s forehead.

“A fever,” he said meditatively. Then he turned to Patrick. “Has it started yet?”

“What started yet?”

“The miscarriage, of course!” the doctor snapped. Really, he had no time for this sort of nonsense.